Middlemarch

‘He is not fit to be a clergyman.’

‘But he ought to be fit.’

‘Well, then, he is not what he ought to be. I know some other people who are in the same case.’

‘But no one approves of them. I should not like to marry a clergyman; but there must be clergymen.’

‘It does not follow that Fred must be one.’

‘But when papa has been at the expense of educating him for it! And only suppose, if he should have no fortune left him?’

‘I can suppose that very well,’ said Mary, dryly.

‘Then I wonder you can defend Fred,’ said Rosamond, inclined to push this point.

‘I don’t defend him,’ said Mary, laughing; ‘I would defend any parish from having him for a clergyman.

‘But of course if he were a clergyman, he must be different.’

‘Yes, he would be a great hypocrite; and he is not that yet.’

‘It is of no use saying anything to you, Mary. You always take Fred’s part.’

‘Why should I not take his part?’ said Mary, lighting up. ‘He would take mine. He is the only person who takes the least trouble to oblige me.’

‘You make me feel very uncomfortable, Mary,’ said Rosamond, with her gravest mildness; ‘I would not tell mamma for the world.’

‘What would you not tell her?’ said Mary angrily.

‘Pray do not go into a rage, Mary,’ said Rosamond, mildly as ever.

‘If your mamma is afraid that Fred will make me an offer, tell her that I would not marry him if he asked me. But he is not going to do so, that I am aware. He certainly never has asked me.’

‘Mary, you are always so violent.’

‘And you are always so exasperating.’

‘I? What can you blame me for?’

‘Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating. There is the bell—I think we must go down.’

‘I did not mean to quarrel,’ said Rosamond, putting on her hat.

‘Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?’

‘Am I to repeat what you have said?’

‘Just as you please. I never say what I am afraid of having repeated. But let us go down.’

Mr Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors stayed long enough to see him; for Mr Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him, and she herself was so kind as to propose a second favourite song of his—‘Flow on, thou shining river’—after that she had sung ‘Home, sweet home’ (which she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing for a song.

Mr Featherstone was still applauding the last performance, and assuring Missy that her voice was as clear as a blackbird’s, when Mr Lydgate’s horse passed the window.

His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged patient—who can hardly believe that medicine would not ‘set him up’ if the doctor were only clever enough—added to his general disbelief in Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while to speak of Mary Garth in that light. Nothing escaped Lydgate in Rosamond’s graceful behaviour; how delicately she waived the notice which the old man’s want of taste had thrust upon her by a quiet gravity, not showing her dimples on the wrong occasion, but showing them afterwards in speaking to Mary, to whom she addressed herself with so much good-natured interest, that Lydgate, after quickly examining Mary more fully than he had done before, saw an adorable kindness in Rosamond’s eyes. But Mary from some cause looked rather out of temper.

‘Miss Rosy has been singing me a song—you’ve nothing to say against that, eh, doctor?’ said Mr Featherstone. ‘I like it better than your physic.’

‘That has made me forget how the time was going,’ said Rosamond, rising to reach her hat, which she had laid aside before singing, so that her flower-like head on its white stem was seen in perfection above her riding-habit. ‘Fred, we must really go.’

‘Very good,’ said Fred, who had his own reasons for not being in the best spirits, and wanted to get away.

‘Miss Vincy is a musician?’ said Lydgate, following her with his eyes. (Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)

‘The best in Middlemarch, I’ll be bound,’ said Mr Featherstone, ‘let the next be who she will. Eh, Fred? Speak up for your sister.’

‘I’m afraid I’m out of court, sir, my evidence would be good for nothing.’

‘Middlemarch has not a very high standard, uncle,’ said Rosamond, with a pretty lightness, going towards her whip, which lay at a distance.

Lydgate was quick in anticipating her. He reached the whip before she did, and turned to present it to her. She bowed and looked at him; he of course was looking at her, and their eyes met with that peculiar meeting which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden divine clearance of haze. I think Lydgate turned a little paler than usual, but Rosamond blushed deeply and felt a certain astonishment. After that, she was really anxious to go, and did not know what sort of stupidity her uncle was talking of when she went to shake hands with him.

Yet this result, which she took to be a mutual impression, called falling in love, was just what Rosamond had contemplated beforehand. Ever since that important new arrival in Middlemarch she had woven a little future, of which something like this scene was the necessary beginning. Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for the virgin mind, against which native merit has urged itself in vain. And a stranger was absolutely necessary to Rosamond’s social romance, which had always turned on a lover and bridegroom who was not a Middlemarcher, and who had no connections at all like her own: of late, indeed, the construction seemed to demand that he should somehow be related to a baronet. Now that she and the stranger had met, reality proved much more moving than anticipation, and Rosamond could not doubt that this was the great epoch of her life. She judged of her own symptoms as those of awakening love, and she held it still more natural that Mr Lydgate should have fallen in love at first sight of her. These things happened so often at balls, and why not by the morning light, when the complexion showed all the better for it? Rosamond, though no older than Mary, was rather used to being fallen in love with; but she, for her part, had remained indifferent and fastidiously critical towards both fresh sprig and faded bachelor. And here was Mr Lydgate suddenly corresponding to her ideal, being altogether foreign to Middlemarch, carrying a certain air of distinction congruous with good family, and possessing connections which offered vistas of that middle-class heaven, rank: a man of talent, also, whom it would be especially delightful to enslave: in fact, a man who had touched her nature quite newly, and brought a vivid interest into her life which was better than any fancied ‘might-be’ such as she was in the habit of opposing to the actual.

Thus, in riding home, both the brother and the sister were preoccupied and inclined to be silent. Rosamond, whose basis for her structure had the usual airy slightness, was of remarkably detailed and realistic imagination when the foundation had been once presupposed; and before they had ridden a mile she was far on in the costume and introductions of her wedded life, having determined on her house in Middlemarch, and foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband’s high-bred relatives at a distance, whose finished manners she could appropriate as thoroughly as she had done her school accomplishments, preparing herself thus for vaguer elevations which might ultimately come. There was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her provisions: she cared about what were considered refinements, and not about the money that was to pay for them.

Fred’s mind, on the other hand, was busy with an anxiety which even his ready hopefulness could not immediately quell. He saw no way of eluding Featherstone’s stupid demand without incurring consequences which he liked less even than the task of fulfilling it. His father was already out of humour with him, and would be still more so if he were the occasion of any additional coolness between his own family and the Bulstrodes. Then, he himself hated having to go and speak to his uncle Bulstrode, and perhaps after drinking wine he had said many foolish things about Featherstone’s property, and these had been magnified by report. Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding. But—those expectations! He really had them, and he saw no agreeable alternative if he gave them up; besides, he had lately made a debt which galled him extremely, and old Featherstone had almost bargained to pay it off. The whole affair was miserably small: his debts were small, even his expectations were not anything so very magnificent. Fred had known men to whom he would have been ashamed of confessing the smallness of his scrapes. Such ruminations naturally produced a streak of misanthropic bitterness. To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular, while such men as Mainwaring and Vyan—certainly life was a poor business, when a spirited young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of everything, had so poor an outlook.

It had not occurred to Fred that the introduction of Bulstrode’s name in the matter was a fiction of old Featherstone’s; nor could this have made any difference to his position. He saw plainly enough that the old man wanted to exercise his power by tormenting him a little, and also probably to get some satisfaction out of seeing him on unpleasant terms with Bulstrode. Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his uncle Featherstone’s soul, though in reality half what he saw there was no more than the reflex of his own inclinations. The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

Fred’s main point of debate with himself was, whether he should tell his father, or try to get through the affair without his father’s knowledge. It was probably Mrs Waule who had been talking about him; and if Mary Garth had repeated Mrs Waule’s report to Rosamond, it would be sure to reach his father, who would as surely question him about it. He said to Rosamond, as they slackened their pace—

‘Rosy, did Mary tell you that Mrs Waule had said anything about me?’

‘Yes, indeed, she did.’

‘What?’

‘That you were very unsteady.’

‘Was that all?’

‘I should think that was enough, Fred.’

‘You are sure she said no more?’

‘Mary mentioned nothing else. But really, Fred, I think you ought to be ashamed.’

‘Oh fudge! don’t lecture me. What did Mary say about it?’